This is why I love HN. A purely rational discussion with citations. Not even Reddit achieves this level of discourse.

I live in New Zealand where many are extremely anti-nuclear, almost to the point of ridiculousness. This causes massive problems: soured relations with United States (and other nuclear capable countries), high prices for electricity, and an arrogant perception on our environment.

The last point is very important: dairy farms and coal mining are destroying the environment but kiwis still perceive themselves as 'clean and green'. 50% of our waterways are toxic. 28 Miners lost their lives digging for coal in one accident, yet there was no massive backlash against coal in New Zealand. If one person died in a nuclear power plant, there would be questions over the entire feasibility of nuclear power in multiple countries, which is ridiculous.

Totally agree with your point. "Nuclear" has become a taboo, even in wording. When you go for a MRI, you know it stands for "Magnetic Resonance Imaging" (MRI), but the actual full name of the diagnostic tool is "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (NMRI)". Because the full name has the "N word" in it, it scares the hell out of people who have no understanding of Science whatsoever. Completely irrational.

Well, considering the dangers presented by earthquakes (cf. Fukushima), maybe there are reasons for New Zealanders to be anti-nuclear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquakes_in_New_Zealand

I know, a lot of different factors contributed to the outcome in Fukushima (e.g. power generators installed in the basement, which is flooded after a Tsunami. See http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/24-hours-at-fukushim... for a good analysis). Still, one might argue that there are areas that are not quite suitable for building nuclear power plants.

Actually not even within a year. People kept living there after the explosion. They had nowhere to go anyway. I remember that in Nagasaki (or Hiroshima, not sure anymore which one) they had the tramway back on track just one week after the nuclear bomb. Of course there were a higher number of leukemia and other health issues, but it recovered fast, very fast.

  > not even within a year

It was less than "less than or equal to a year?"

"He held his breath for a long time, but within a year he was forced to start again." "I believe it was actually about 5 minutes." "Is that not within a year?"

There's a huge difference between people remaining in a city through a nuclear bomb blast and people coming back to that city less than a year later. That's what the parent was trying to get across.

Yes, thanks for clarifying, my first sentence was not very clear.

Thanks for the correction

Centralia isn't even a town any more. Its buildings have all been reclaimed and condemned and the zip code has been revoked. The government is likely concerned that the fire is going to cause the entire area to subsist through loss of mass underground.